Edited Interview with Colin O'Daly at his home (24/112008) Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire (MM) Colin O'Daly (CD) 1. MM: So I suppose when and where you born? 2. CD: Born here in Dublin in 23'd September, 1952. 3. MM: 1952 right. That makes you now, you're fifty-six this year, fifty-five now, and you'll be fifty-six next September, so yes you're just fifty-five. 4. CD: I grew up in the north side of Dublin and my father was in aviation so we lived at the airport. 5. MM: You lived actually at the airport? 6. CD: In the airport on the background, it was Colinstown in those days. 7. MM: Named after yourself, it's as if you owned the place (laugh). 8. CD: I remember my father going out the winter in the snow to pull the aircraft out of the snow; he was in the crash team. He was one of the fust people, his father didn't speak to him, you know, when he said he was going into aviation, to an airfield out in Dublin airport and he had a good job in the civil service at the time, his father thought he was mad you know. If planes were meant to fly, you know. 9. MM: Yeah a different time wasn't it. So your father had been in the civil service first and then took an idea for aviation in exciting times when it was only starting off? 10. CD: He was doing architecture and engineering and craftsmanship, all that kind of stuff, you know, so that's when he went to work in the airport. And at one stage he was responsible for the cities of Dublin and Cork and Shannon airports, you know. 11. MM: Wow, and was there many in the family Colin? 12. CD: There was four of us in the family. 13. MM: Where did you come? 14. CD: Well I was the second eldest. I had an older sister who was killed in a car accident when I was very small. 15. MM: So that made you the eldest living as such? 16. CD: Yeah the oldest one living, and I'm the only one who actually went into, I suppose I ended up in the catering industry I suppose, after a long term of ill health and loss of education. That wasn't a time where the choices were fairly dark, if you didn't have education where did you go to? 17. MM: Tell me about your ill health? 18. CD: Well I got cortisone poisoning as a child and just in general was very, very ill and small for my age. I'll always remember later on when I went to work in the terminal kitchen in Dublin airport, it transpired I supposed, the family orientated back to the airport but I was so small I used 525 PDF Creator- PDF4Free v2.0 http://www.pdf4free.com to stand on an orange box to see onto the top of the range. Willie Ryan would say 'where's your orange box, you know' because I was only a little lad, you know. I Figure CD.l: Photo of Colin O'Daly and two female chefs in The Park 19. MM: Escoffier was like that too so I wouldn't worry about it, you're in good company (laugh). Escoffier used to wear platforms I think, as far as I know. He was quite short in stature. 20. CD: Yeah so through my ill health and loss of education, schooling and all that. 21. MM: Sorry how far did you go in school as such? Did you just finish your primary cert or did you ... 22. CD: Pretty much self educated, all the way. I think I went two or three years in my entire life into school. But I educated myself in hospital. I was in hospital in London for a long time and I had private teaching and all that sort of stuff you know. I was also very ambitious. I worked very hard and I was very ambitious and I was always out to prove that I could do it as well as anybody else, you know, and I did, you know. 23 . MM: When you did go to school which school did you go to? Was it a local school out near Swords? 24. CD: I went to the CUS (Catholic University School) in Leeson Street. 25 . MM: Oh Leeson Street, okay yeah. 26. CD: I went to the CUS in Leeson Street but at the time we were living in the... My very junior education was in Griffith Avenue, junior infants type of thing in Corpus Christi. 27. MM: Oh yeah that's across the road from where I live; I live on Home Farm Road. 28. CD: But we lived on the Rise in Glasnevin, I was raised up on the Rise. 29. MM: Andersons is up there now, where the butcher shop used to be. 526 PDF Creator- PDF4Free v2.0 http://www.pdf4free.com 30. CD: But we moved once the airport started to expand, we had to move, we moved nearer into town and then at that time the airport was out in the country and when our parents were thinking about education later on and where we were going to go to school and you know, and the airport was miles away you know. 31. MM: So what age, the airport was your first catering job was it? 32. CD: Yeah I went, Johnny Opperman was there at the time. 33. MM: He was yeah. 34. CD: ChefDoyle, Jimmy Doyle had just taken over. 35 . MM: Right, okay. So he'd tak~n over from, had Jimmy Flahive been. 36. CD: Jimmy Flahive was the flight chef wasn't he. 37. MM: Well I think what happened I think Jimmy was originally the Collar of Gold or the Dublin airport restaurant. He became sort of executive chef or something like that so they would have brought in a head chef. 38. CD: He was there for the first weeks that I was there in the Collar of Gold and then moved over, he went to the flight kitchen or. .. 39. MM: Jimmy Doyle you said, is it? 40. CD: Jimmy Doyle became head chef. 41 . MM: What age were you? What year would this be? 42. CD: About sixteen I think. 43. MM: So this would be around 1968. 44. CD: 1968/1969 yeah. Wait until I show you this, this will spark the memory (showing a scrapbook of photos and newspaper clippings). I won my first gold medal in a Catering Exhibition. And that's later on the Park in Kenmare. 45 . MM: It's fabulous. 46. CD: My mum keeps all these, you know. 47. MM: Yeah, she's proud of you, and rightly so. So tell us, you're sixteen years old as you said yourself, you were short, you'd be sickly for quite a while and you move in then to working in a professional kitchen, how was it? 48. CD: Well it was funny because at the end of day, as I said, I was quite ambitious and what would I do? What could I do? So I'd heard about a job in the airport, in the kitchen in the airport for a commis chef. I didn't tell my parents, or my family, or my father and mother and my brother but I went to the interview and got the job and I always remember later, into a few weeks there Jimmy Doyle asked me to work overtime or OT as they called it, and because I didn't know what OT was, he said 'tell your father I want to see him in the morning', you know So the morning came, well I went home that night to the dad, my father didn't know I'd taken the job in the airport, anyway I told him the head chef wanted to see him in the morning tomorrow. So my father arrived in and I always remember being in the kitchen in my whites and everybody around, There 527 PDF Creator- PDF4Free v2.0 http://www.pdf4free.com is my father standing with his roll of plans, big cigar, brief case. Jimmy Doyle is there thinking what does he want? 'You want to see me?' asked my father. 'I want to see you' asked Jimmy Doyle, 'yes, you know, about my son' said my father. 'Is that your son?' (laugh) 49. MM: Ah, they hadn't figured it out? 50. CD: No (laugh). 51. MM: (Laugh). 52. CD: And I remember my father saying 'look whatever happens between the two of you is between the two of you. Colin has come here on his own'. I remember at one stage in the terminal kitchen in Dublin airport there was a spiral staircase and I fell down the spiral staircase and I was lying flat on my back and the lads said 'compensation, stay down we'll get an ambulance' and I remembered it was my father wh~ put the stairs there, I was up like a shot (laugh). 53. MM: (Laugh). So who do you remember there, you went in '68, Jimmy Doyle you said was head chef, who else was there now? 54. CD: It was still an old style kitchen. My first impression going through the steel door, you know, all the women from the Coombe area, all the hard women, tough women but with hearts of gold.